


The View from the Top

by someonestolemyshoes



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Drabble, Fluff, Gen, armin-centric, descriptive, eremika is incredibly loosely implied, introspective, it's just fluff jesus christ @ me, it's mostly armin x outside world
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-04
Updated: 2016-03-04
Packaged: 2018-05-24 17:36:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6161224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/someonestolemyshoes/pseuds/someonestolemyshoes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They talk of forests, huge ones, with trees that stretch right up to the sky and they talk of great rock hills taller than the walls, hills that reach higher than the clouds, so tall he could touch the stars if he stoop right at the very top. They talk of water, too; of an expanse so vast that the sun lives in it, that it rises from it in the morning and sinks back beneath the waves when night time comes and Armin drinks in each and every word and he wonders.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The View from the Top

**Author's Note:**

> So I was re-watching Haikyuu!! like the true trash I am and I realised for the millionth time that Hinata's opening speech is so so perfect for Armin in SNK and I wanted to draw the thing but I can't d r a w so I thought I'd try and write it instead so HERE have it

_**A tall, tall wall looms in front of me.**  _

He’s spent years watching it. 

The world rolls in over the top of the walls in thick, heavy clouds and bleeding sunlight and at night it shrouds their cage in darkness. It spills over the stone, spreads like long, creeping fingers into nooks and crevices and it dances at the edges of street lights and windows and he’s spent a life time watching it from behind the glass in his bedroom.

He watches it tiptoe as close as it dares to the burn of his lantern and when his eyes fall heavy he curls up in his bed, extinguishes the flame and lets the world climb in through his window. 

_**What’s the view on the other side?** _

For a while he wonders if the sky is all there is. He wonders if the world beyond the walls is nothing but blue and grey and black, nothing but clouds and stars and sunlight. He wonders if the world beyond the walls is more than what he can see from within them.  

He wonders, for the longest time, if that’s all there _could_ be. And then the rumors come. They travel on quick, light tongues in quiet voices, in a back alley, under the bridge, passed around to eager ears at market stalls and outside bars and Armin soaks them in. 

They talk of forests, huge ones, with trees that stretch right up to the sky and they talk of great rock hills taller than the walls, hills that reach higher than the clouds, so tall he could touch the stars if he stood right at the very top. They talk of water, too; of an expanse so vast that the sun _lives_ in it, that it rises from it in the morning and sinks back beneath the waves when night time comes and Armin drinks in each and every word and he wonders. 

_**What does it look like?** _

He takes the book everywhere. 

It’s not safe, he knows this; he’s been told time and time again about the danger of dwelling on the world beyond the walls but try as he might, he can’t bring himself to put it down. 

He reads more about the forests of giant trees. They’re old, hundreds of years old, perhaps, rooted deep into the earth and reaching for the skies and Armin thinks it might be peaceful to be among them. It might be nice to watch the clouds breeze by through cracks in the branches and gaps between leaves, to sit in the silence and the stillness and let the world pass by beneath him and over him and _around_  him. 

He learns more about the great rock hills - mountains, they’re called - with cold snowy caps and treacherous paths and he thinks of the view from the top of the highest one. He thinks how it would feel, to have the whole world spread before him as he stands in the sky with his feet on the ground. 

There are other things in the book, too, rumors that never made it to his ears. Mountains that bleed liquid fire and vast lands of snow and ice and hot, dry fields of sand and things he couldn’t imagine in his wildest dreams. 

And he learns more about the water that houses the sun. He learns just how big it really is, learns that it stretches right over the surface of the world, that it sinks so deep into earths foundations that no man could ever reach the bottom. 

He learns that they call it the ocean. 

_**It’s a view I could never see on my own.** _

He pictures it a thousand times.

A world without titans, a world where the places beyond their cage are safe, open and waiting, a world where he can travel the land with his book and with every wish and dream and rumor and with freedom. 

He can dream of it. He can plan and scheme and theorize. He can, and he does, prepare for a time when they will be free, when somebody else will clear his path and pave his way. He can prepare for a world without walls and titans.

He pictures it at night, when the outside world slithers in and pokes at the places his candle's flame can’t reach, but he knows that it’s impossible. 

It’s impossible, because he is one boy, and one boy alone, no matter how much he dreams and plans and schemes, cannot rid the world of titans and buy humanity it’s freedom. One boy - one small, weedy, _gutless_ boy - cannot make a difference. 

_**But…** _

The belts hurt where they criss-cross over his legs, where they dig into the bones at his hips and the points of his shoulders and there are already welts on his chest, thick red lines that itch and burn. 

It was never the way he’d wanted to do things - he’s never been cut out for fighting, for blood and violence and the risks that come with it - but circumstances change, Armin knows this. People leave, they disappear or they die or the walls break down and the titans spill in and those people that might have left or disappeared or died are murdered before his very eyes. 

Circumstances change, and with one change comes another, and Armin’s plans must follow. 

But change, he thinks, isn’t always a bad thing. 

“Are you still going to join the Survey Corps?” 

It’s Mikasa who speaks and the words are directed at Eren. He nods, hard, certain, and Mikasa pulls her scarf over her mouth and nods back. 

“Me, too,” she says, and Eren looks over at her, over the top of Armin’s head and he watches something heavy and silent pass between them. 

“And me,” he says. Their eyes are on him, he can tell, but he is looking out over what is left of the land within Wall Maria and he is thinking about the world beyond their walls, and he is thinking about changing circumstances and changing plans and he is thinking that maybe, this is his new ticket out. 

He can fight for his freedom, fight for the world that reaches inside the walls in clouds and sunlight and dark, spindly fingers and now, he is strong enough to do it. He’s strong enough to claw his way out. 

And he is strong, he thinks, looking at Eren to his left and Mikasa to his right, because he’s no longer dreaming on his own. 

**_If I’m not doing it alone…_ **

They’re laughing, he and Eren and Mikasa, and they’re crying, too, and Armin is the first to stumble onto the sand, to kick off his boots and feel the sun-warm beach beneath his feet. He rolls his trousers up to the knee - there are scars on his pale skin, marks that remind him of belts and wires and blades and blood - and he finds his way to the water on shock-numb legs. 

It’s cool where it meets his skin, laps up onto the sand and crashes into his shins and all he can do is watch the water meet his skin and shrink away again. Mikasa’s heat falls over one side of him and Eren’s over the other, their feet sinking into the surf beside his and he stretches his arms, one over each of their shoulders, and pulls them in until their heads crack hard enough to justify the tears leaking down his cheeks. 

“We made it.” It’s all he can say and it’s all he _has_  to say. Eren’s head bobs against his and Mikasa’s arm tightens around his waist. 

It takes a minute but Armin finally, finally lifts his eyes from their toes to stare at the world spread before them and  _oh_. 

The sky is the thickest, deepest red, patched in fading yellows and oranges and tinged purple at the edges and the sun hangs low like a heavy, bleeding pendulum. 

He is tired, bone tired, and he’s messy and scratched and scarred but they _made_  it. He can see it, the way the sun is swallowed up by the swell on the horizon, and there is wet, gritty sand between his toes and the water is cold where it laps at his ankles and he can smell the salt in the air and this, he thinks, as he watches the top of the sun sink beneath the waves, is only the beginning. 

This is the ocean, he thinks, and there’s a whole world out there waiting for him. Waiting for _them._  

_**I might just be able to see it.** _

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> If anyone wants to draw it honestly feel free I'd cry it'd be my dream i just love Armin so much


End file.
